


Taken

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: mcsmooch, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-07
Updated: 2007-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing makes sense to Rodney any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taken

"What do you remember?" she asks, voice so gentle, so unassuming that it does nothing but freak Rodney out. Not that he has it in him to do anything with the restless energy that panic gifts him.

"Books." He swallows nervously. "I remember books."

She arches an eyebrow – at least he thinks it's a she. Her voice is – it sounds – and her body is – Rodney blinks twice but it doesn't resolve the issue. She might be a woman and she might be a man and she might be something else he's supposed to remember and she's talking again. "Only books?"

"And computers. I had – " His lips are dry and he wants water but wets them with his tongue instead. "I had computers from when I was – I was small. Vic 20. Commodore 64. I learned basic when I was eight." None of this is going to mean a thing to her, but he feels like he ought to be thorough.

"And this is what you did? Each evening?" She seems to be eyeing him with pity now. "Read books and worked at a computer?"

"Yes?"

"And you felt no . . . regret?"

Rodney flushes. "Over what?"

"Surely your peers were not also reading books and – "

"Oh, I see," he snaps, and there's a strange clarity to be had in the fact that the old bitterness still tastes as strong as it ever did, burning the back of his throat. "You'd rather I'd been out destroying my intellect with cheap beer and the ravaging effects of venereal disease? Yes, yes, _that_ would be evidence I was well-adjusted." He tugs at the straps holding down his hands, but they're just as intractable as ever. "Jesus."

"And attraction?"

Rodney closes his eyes. He does not want the conversation to go here, he does not, he does not. "What about it?"

"How were you able to assuage the demands of – "

He snorts and opens his eyes again. "Please. I jacked off like every other guy my age."

"To images of men or women?" she asks and he tenses, heart rate climbing. He can hear it on the monitor, revealing everything. If he were sharp he could think of some witty comeback to skewer that kind of question – but he's not sharp, he's dull and foggy and something's not right, not right at all.

"Whatever," he says weakly. He's tired.

"Men, Rodney? Did you fantasize about men?"

"Leave me alone, now," he whispers.

She wraps a hand around his bare ankle, pinned just as securely as his hands. "You're avoiding the question."

"So what if I am?" he asks, but the fight's gone out of him. "So what if I am, am, am, am." The babbled repetition feels comforting on his tongue. "Am, am, am."

She hisses then – she's not unlike his mother, he realizes, and wow, that's a whole new level of frightening, disturbing, consternating, if, in fact, consternating is a real word and possibly he shouldn't be fixating on his vocabulary right now but on the fact that she has very large teeth and there's noise and light and this can't be good, this can't be good –

"Rodney!"

Okay, his mother never ever sounded like that. Nor, despite the times she came close, did she ever slap him. Nor were her hands that big.

"Quit it!" he manages, and wonders if he has it in him to headbutt the strange, shrinking pseudo-woman who, oh, oh, okay, now she's growing, and wow, this is tripping him the fuck out.

"Not until I get you outta here," someone growls, and there are busy fingers at his wrists which is bad, very bad, wrists are vulnerable, delicate places, places where blood pumps just under the skin and feelings get caught too close to the surface. But every digit this other guy has lacks a relationship to a knife or scalpel or other tool for slicing skin, so that's good, very good, no faked suicides today, no one trying to hurt him and cover up the evidence, not like that, he's not a statistic, although he wonders if someone keeps track of that sort of data out here, wherever it is.

"Do people often fake suicides?" he thinks to ask, because his train of thought seems to be jumping the rails in some pretty important places and he doesn't even understand why he's thinking about the subject. The heart monitor fails – a long, impatient whine – and for a second he thinks he's dead, except someone has his face cupped gently in a large, warm hand, so if he _is_ dead, apparently he got both the nature and quality of the afterlife wrong.

"Hey buddy," the guy in front of him says, and it's definitely a guy now, not a woman. Rodney frowns.

"Buddy," he repeats, testing out the sound of the word.

The guy huffs a breath – he seems pissed off, frustrated, like he's run a distance, something like that. "Yeah, you. You've been – " The guy yanks something out of the back of his hand and it stings _hard_. "Drugged. At least I hope it's drugs. My job's to shoot stuff, not diagnose why you look like crap, we've discussed this, and I'd like to get you out of here now, okay?"

"The woman was – "

"She wasn't a woman," the guy replies tightly, "and she doesn't care about much anymore."

"Oh." Rodney wonders if he's supposed to feel something in particular about that. He just feels bewildered.

"Rodney. Stay with me, here."

Rodney nods. The guy looks intense but not especially scary, and Rodney can't figure out why. He's dressed in black which – huh. Black. Black, black, black – "Are you Johnny Cash?" he asks.

A lot of things happen to the other guy's face in response to that – at a rough guess Rodney'd say he wanted to laugh out loud, beat someone, maybe get upset so long as no one's looking, and swear a hell of a lot – but then everything settles and he just says, "no," as he helps Rodney off the table, catches him under the elbow when Rodney starts to fall. "C'mon," the guy says. "Ronon's upstairs, it's just you and me, and I sure as hell can't carry you."

Rodney nods, leans against this guy, the guy with the black and the stubble and the cut on the back of one hand and the skin smell that's so familiar and he makes his legs work even though they hurt. "Are we going home?"

"Yeah," the guy says, easing Rodney toward the upper level, tread by tread up a metal staircase.

"That's good," Rodney says on an exhale. "John'll be worried."

And there's a soft breath of laughter – frustrated and rueful and relieved laughter – at his ear just before lips brush against his temple. "He knows you're okay," the guy says. "He made sure of it."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Reclaimed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/118262) by [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon)




End file.
